Victorian houses are wonderful things. They have thick walls, solid doors and an admirable determination to keep the outside world firmly outside. This is extremely useful during a damp February in Sussex. It is rather less useful when the temperature has spent several weeks behaving as though Frant has been relocated to Provence.
For the first day or two, the farmhouse remained pleasingly cool. We congratulated its builders on their foresight and felt quietly superior to everyone living in modern houses.
Then the heat worked its way into the bricks, the roof and every other substantial part of the building. Once warm, the house appeared determined to preserve that warmth until approximately November.
That is the trouble with a solid, well-insulated old house during a prolonged hot spell. It resists the heat magnificently at first — but once the heat gets in, it is treated as an honoured guest and encouraged to stay.
Opening the windows merely introduced the hot air outside to the hot air inside. Fans moved it energetically from one side of the room to the other. By bedtime, the upstairs bedrooms had acquired the atmosphere of a particularly elegant orangery.
And so, in a development the Victorians almost certainly did not foresee, we decamped to our RBM Panda Air Large — universally known in our household as the Panda XL, because describing something this enormous as merely “Large” seems rather restrained.
What began as a tactical retreat for one night has lasted for almost the entire summer.
Admittedly, “tent” does not quite do it justice. The Panda is closer to a canvas country residence: high enough to stand in, large enough for proper beds and sufficiently substantial to make ordinary camping feel rather underambitious. With its glowing string lights, mattresses and assorted domestic comforts, it has become Martins Farm’s unofficial summer wing.
There is no air conditioning, but there is something better: actual air.
The field cools naturally after sunset, the canvas breathes and a gentle current of night air passes through the tent. Instead of spending the night negotiating with a duvet in a heat-soaked bedroom, we sleep at exactly the right temperature for us — cool enough to settle comfortably, but warm enough not to wake wondering whose idea it was to move outdoors.
There is, rather irritatingly, some genuine science behind our excellent sleep.
As bedtime approaches, our core body temperature naturally begins to fall as part of the body’s circadian rhythm. That cooling process is closely connected with falling asleep. Trying to sleep in a bedroom that is still radiating the afternoon’s heat is therefore asking one’s biology to swim uphill.
Beneath canvas, the surrounding air cools with the landscape, making it easier for the body to shed heat and remain comfortable through the night. There is no universal perfect sleeping temperature — it depends on the person, bedding, humidity and airflow — but the Panda appears to have found our particular sweet spot.
Sleeping outside also restores a more natural relationship with light. Darkness arrives properly, rather than being followed by several hours of lamps, screens and glowing electronic devices. Morning light then filters gradually through the canvas. Research into camping and sleep has found that greater exposure to natural light and darkness can help bring the body clock closer to the natural solar day.
In other words, we have accidentally constructed a sleep laboratory with guy ropes.
At night, we lie beneath the trees listening to the farm settle down: owls calling, leaves moving and the occasional unexplained rustle that everyone agrees is probably a hedgehog and definitely does not require investigation.
Morning arrives somewhat earlier than it does inside the house. Birds do not observe a respectful check-out time, and sunlight through canvas has little interest in blackout blinds. But waking naturally, with fresh air in the tent and the fields just beyond the door, is a rather wonderful way to begin the day.
There are, of course, compromises. A midnight walk back to the house requires shoes, a torch and a certain amount of determination. Anything left outside becomes damp with dew. Every evening involves a brief but serious discussion about whether the tent has been properly zipped up. And no one ever volunteers to go back for the forgotten phone charger.
Yet the experience has reminded us how restorative it can be to sleep outdoors. The farmhouse may be only a short walk away, but life beneath canvas feels entirely different: quieter, simpler and more closely connected to the landscape around us.
The Victorians built houses magnificently suited to British winters. What they failed to anticipate was a changing climate, prolonged summer heat and a family abandoning its bedrooms for an enormous illuminated tent on the lawn.
We shall move back indoors eventually — presumably when the rain begins, the nights draw in and the farmhouse once again becomes the warm, solid refuge it was designed to be.
Until then, the Panda XL remains open for business.
No room service. No en-suite. But the ventilation is excellent.
We have accidentally constructed a sleep laboratory with guy ropes.